Mell.4873

I survive far longer on my Virtuoso than I ever did on my chrono especially against bosses where clones get 1 shot.

I guess, I mean I don't play raids so I can't speak to that. For strikes though I have brought Virtuoso and done better than my Chrono in terms of damage.

I was reading through that thread to but its so argumentative and hard to follow. I should do a build giude for both the Chronomancers. One is a mantra healer/quickness and the other is the same as snowcrow power build but spam phantasmal defender. It works amazing in some typically hard content like underwater or the old dungeons. I think I bring this up everytime the selfish Virtuoso get brought up which is you can run Inspiration and heal at the loss of about 5k golem dps. It's even less in the open world.

I think his point is there are just better options for quickness which is true, I mean I only use quickness/heal chrono as a last resort most of the time.

Again yes but it isnt, focus group up and Bladesong combo alone will give you more dps than quickness. The only thing i will agree is Chrono makes an amazing tank (altho selfish). Phantasmal defender makes some content very trivial when used correctly but you normally need people to heal you.

I have a brilliant idea for everyone arguing silly semantics of Virtuoso. Why don't you play all the Mesmer Elites when required. If the group you are in doesn't enough boons then you can play support Chrono or Mirage. If the boon are fine play Virtuoso, we have a full spectrum of answers to group problems. The whole Selfish DPS problem is a not a problem. claiming the golem numbers are not realistic well this is more true for Mirage(axe) and Chronomancer which requires a VERY specific or situation for the rotation like Mirage(axe) being in melee. While virtuoso has 0 and I mean 0 set up or rotation. You spam skills and just try aim Auto/(F1)Bladesong through as many enemies as possible, that is the high level game. After patch i might draw some diagrams of how you can aim the Bladesongs correctly.

It actually cant, maybe with continuum split you can get enough burst to pull off slightly higher numbers but from my playing of both even without quickness and alacrity Virtuoso is has better. The real super power of Virtuoso is it has no clones, this means i can switch targets much more reliably than Chrono and even Mirage which has the Axe skill to move clones.

My Build with all the boon minus the raid ones get me 25k dps (30k with raid buffs). Swapping Dueling with Inspiration makes it 20k I guess if had my 40k DPS gear i guess i would see a bigger difference but not by much since most of the different you will see is in Condition damage not Power damage which Dueling does not effect. I don't run any different utilities.

Sorry my mistake i thought there was a combo.

Last time a looked there was a way to achieve permanently quickness on yourself with lighting fields and variety of other things like runes and sigils.

Necro in general will always be relevant in group content since it can pull players with its shroud F4 skill along with Vampiric Presence and Last Rites are valuable. Virtuoso as you know can run Inspiration which does not effect DPS much and provide group aegis and heals. The passive group healing in particular are much better on Virtuoso due to how fast you stock blades. I'm not to familiar with weaver so I cant say if there are some good group buffs.

It doesn't work on everything much like Mirage dodge. I play every Mesmer class and switch between them.

Chrono far more fits with what you are describing since has almost no survivability skill/traits besides phantasmal defender and Continuum Split. I guess you play healer but the cooldowns on everything but Mantras is brutal. Virtuoso on the other hand is in-between Mirage and Chrono in terms of survivability. It has a damage avoiding skills/traits with aegis and has plenty of healing with Condi Jagged Mind. This is why one of the best builds currently is Condi Inspiration Virtuoso. You heal yourself a whopping 500 HPS while outputting 1k HPS.

True and I guess you do get a flat 15% critical damage then a further 10% but if you check arc most of your damage comes from bleed and then the auto attack so not even the F1 does that much strike damage. Yes and no, the cast time the problem. I spend most of my time spamming Temporal Curtain to group targets up and then using the dagger skill + All Bladesongs. The rotations doesn't really need a long cast time phantasmal swordsmen which is why I normally run pistol. This is a Open World PvE build so that is why I'm healing as well. I mean the main reason this works is because its consistent, the rotation doesn't rely on any set up skills so you can just spam everything while trying to group everything up ever 20 seconds. I agree so this exactly why i run dueling for fractals 🙂. I run mostly the snowcrow build, i believe i have a little more condition damage and duration rather than 100% critical chance.

Yeah that is what i found, i play Condi so my Soulbeast was definitely less effective because of it.

Its not so much a question but rather this is what i have achieved when my Soulbeast counter part could not. I think this is mostly due to how I play which is a mix of tanking while standing on the point and then running off and hiding while my pet fights. This was how i played Soulbeast and now is how i play untamed. I got into a fight looking for a place to hide or punish someone who is low. In essence I'm really really good at using the pet.

Not really golem numbers are about 5k difference so 35k, most of your damage comes from blades procing bleed and none of the other trait lines dont add that much damage. The biggest problem with Dueling is get value out of most of the traits you need get the target below 50% or summon your phantasmal swordsmen. This all takes some which is why said burst was not affected by the Dueling what so ever. Atleast compounding power from the Illusion trait line triggers on Bladesongs. While nothing in the Dueling tree does.

I don't use that since I run the barrage combo which works much better in my opinion.

Did you not read his post, Virtuoso already does more damage and doesn't need clones. In most if not all pve scenarios Virtuoso will come out on top, maybe just maybe with a good Mirage which I can play well you can do slightly more damage.

Okay I agree, it's a bit late now to change any of it. Maybe turn one of the Bladesongs into a ground targeted ability or just buff the unblockable trait.

All true but what do you want them to do remove reflections from the game. I mean there is a unblockable trait for Virtouso (I believe its bugged) so if anything Virtuoso should better than Ranger for long distances combat.

I think you proved my point. When I zerg on Blackgate I bring whatever I want which is normally Longbow Soulbeast and I often run off and snipe people outside the zerg. I run lots of stability and escapes just in case If get caught I can run back into the zerg ball. WvW is easy 90% of the time we just steam roll through everything. It is true Virtuoso projectiles can be blocked with domes and walls which is the exact same problem with ranger. On a side note, I don't run conventional Ranger Longbow in WvW. I run quick draw to get my Barrage back quicker and at the same time I can switch my sPvP Untamed which is brutal in roaming.

I feel the same way, Everyone keeps saying stop balancing classes based on golem number well why dont we apply this to other game modes. For general Zerging Virtuoso is fine and is amazing since you have almost nothing to worry about except following the zerg and throwing out damage. The hybrid Condi build means everything you do heals you so can focus on following the commander rather than risking it by straying from the group.

Let me rephrase my comment. I see people play in gold and even high gold just fine without dropping rank. I'm currently in the top 250 players and have seen more Virtuosos than Chronos and Mirages combine.

I dont think anyone is arguing changes to Virtuoso, the topic here is what role Virtuoso preforms in the group. The OP is arguing upfront damage, which I agree and everyone else says Virtuoso is useless and needs a rework ( for mostly PVP?) I mean most people here are on two different pages, I mean I agree with PvP changed/buff but not PvE. Most of the PvE changes that people want will strip away the class identity as being an upfront dps because people would rather it do something else like support.